Burma regime warns Aung San Suu Kyi against election challenge

Burma's military regime has warned opponents against any challenge to the country's recent elections for the first time since Aung San Suu Kyi's release.

The release of Aung San Suu Kyi has prompted a re-assessment of sanctionsPhoto: REUTERS

By Ian MacKinnon in Bangkok

5:31PM GMT 17 Nov 2010

The move could set Ms Suu Kyi, 65, in direct conflict with the generals as she has already pledged to investigate widespread allegations of voting irregularities even though her National League for Democracy (NLD) boycotted the poll derided as "neither free nor fair".

Just days after her release from the detention she endured for 15 of the past 21 years, the warning by Burma's official Union Election Commission raised fears that any confrontation could lead to her rearrest, a risk of which she said she was aware but not afraid.

In a measure of her fortitude she filed an affidavit in Burma's High Court on Tuesday to get her NLD party reinstated after it was dissolved in September for urging a boycott of the election and failing to re-register itself.

Complete official results of the November 7 poll, the first since 1990 when the junta ignored an NLD landslide victory, have yet to be announced.

But the pro-junta Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has already claimed a crushing victory margin in both national parliaments.

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Critics, some of them from the National Democratic Force which split from the NLD to take part, allege intimidation to force voters to support the USDP, as well as rigged "advance voting".

The election commission has threatened harsh legal penalties for those filing complaints about the election results deemed fraudulent. Individuals can be jailed for three years and fined up to £200.

Within hours of being released from house arrest after seven years Ms Suu Kyi announced that she would stand with NLD party officials in their investigation of electoral fraud and issue a report into the findings.

But while she said she would fight for human rights and the rule of law in Burma, she said the NLD was not considering protesting the result as it had shunned the election.